


Poetry for Vulcans

by tahariel



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen, vulcans like poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahariel/pseuds/tahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The human did not turn around, instead remained gazing out into space, his figure limned in the faint glowing reflection of himself, pale and blanched, an imperfect blur of features in the dim lights of ship’s night. “It’s a poem, Spock. By a man named Robert Bly. Late twentieth century, something like that.”</p><p>“I see.” Spock found himself walking slowly forward to stand beside the Captain, looking where he looked and seeing nothing but great expanses of darkness. The spackling of stars had the illusion of being very small but near to the eye, though he knew that they were much further and larger than even his logical mind could truly comprehend. “Are you the boy or the pond?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poetry for Vulcans

**Author's Note:**

> This was a WIP that was never, and is never likely to be, finished, but I thought I'd post it anyway since I've always been rather fond of it.

It had begun very early on in their voyage, only shortly after their departure from the Earth spacedock. Spock had been quiet, he knew, as he walked onto the observation deck, but Kirk had seemed to know that he was there; certainly it seemed unlikely that he was in the habit of speaking poetry aloud in empty rooms, but he stood before the tall planes of the windows facing out towards the stars with his arms folded neatly behind his back and said, before Spock could either speak or turn to leave,

 _“Have you heard about the boy who walked by  
The black water? I won't say much more.  
Let's wait a few years. It wanted to be entered.  
Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand  
Reaches out and pulls him in.”_

“I beg your pardon, Captain?”

The human did not turn around, instead remained gazing out into space, his figure limned in the faint glowing reflection of himself, pale and blanched, an imperfect blur of features in the dim lights of ship’s night. “It’s a poem, Spock. By a man named Robert Bly. Late twentieth century, something like that.”

“I see.” Spock found himself walking slowly forward to stand beside the Captain, looking where he looked and seeing nothing but great expanses of darkness. The spackling of stars had the illusion of being very small but near to the eye, though he knew that they were much further and larger than even his logical mind could truly comprehend. “Are you the boy or the pond?”

The sideways glance he received was incredulous and somewhat amused despite itself, the preoccupied expression on Kirk’s face twitching up at the corners into humour. “What?”

“As a poem is often an idea expressed as metaphor or simile, rather than realistic depictions of people and concepts, I thought it wise to include the pond in an analysis of your interaction with the verse,” Spock said dryly, and was rewarded when Kirk looked away from space and towards him, the turn back towards the lights putting colour back into those electric eyes. “If you demand anthropomorphic representations, however, perhaps you might be the hand, rather than the pond. I have found that human literature rarely follows set rules.”

“Huh.” The Captain scrubbed a hand back through his already-scruffy hair, ducking his head as he did so so that his smile was cast in shadow, half-hidden. “I didn’t know you were a lit critic, Spock. Do vulcans even do poetry?”

“My Grandfather was considered quite accomplished, I believe,” Spock said, “though his work does not translate well into Standard. His focus was so primarily upon matters of the mind, and of telepathy, that humans often lack the basic grounding in the concepts required to follow his discourses.”

“ _The brain-- is wider than the sky,_ ” Kirk murmured, “ _For -- put them side by side -- The one the other will contain -- With ease -- and You – beside._ ”

“Emily Dickinson.”

Kirk’s eyebrows rose, blinking away surprise. “You know human poetry?”

“My mother – ” the most infinitesimal of pauses, almost more noticeable in its absence than its presence – “was human, Captain. And a teacher, before her marriage. She found great enjoyment in poetry.”

The touch of the Captain’s hand to Spock’s sleeved arm was firm and cool, clasping fingers around his upper arm in what was clearly intended as a supportive gesture; as such Spock did not brush it off, despite his usual response to such physical intimacy. “You’ll have to tell me some of her favourites sometime,” Kirk said, and let go. “Come on, we’ve got a ship to break in. I bet Captain Maury we could beat her speed record past the Jupiter outpost on our way out. Best thing about space – no traffic cops.”

Spock did not reply to this but to give Kirk a long, considering look, which the human returned with one of his broad, disarming grins that, upon closer inspection, were as effective a smokescreen as Spock’s blank expression.

“I can always find someone else to help me test out my new wheels while Daddy’s not looking, you know,” Kirk said, and Spock allowed himself to be ushered away, back into the more lively areas of the ship and away from the scene of Kirk’s unexpected intellectualism.

 

 

~~~

 

 

It is a comfortable routine, after a while, and one he does not think about overly much. They alternate between his rooms and those of the Captain, or nearly so, as convenient; the chess board is set up, and they play the first match ferociously, viciously, snatching pieces from the board as they are taken from the game and barely taking space to consider their moves but instead moving on instinct, on flashes of insight. It is unlike any manner of playing chess Spock has previously utilised, and it is exhilarating; the flash of white teeth as Kirk grins savagely, flicking aside a pawn to place his knight in the emptied square. The necessity of thinking quickly, of relying upon intuition rather than careful consideration, of operating upon logic at light speed, pushing himself ever to be faster, better. At first, Kirk is more often victor, being more used to reacting this quickly, to functioning in this manner; however, over time Spock adjusts, becomes more proficient, and they become more evenly matched. Kirk is always the more aggressive, the more openly elated and energised by this ritualised, lightning play.

And when the game is finished, and one of them is the victor, they lean back in their seats and pause at last to breathe, deeply in and out, the light in Kirk’s eyes bright and flaring high, as though the adrenaline of the game is but oxygen to the flame. Spock is not sure when first they turned this pause into a discussion of poetry, but it becomes a regular fixture of their evenings spent together, and he finds he does not mind it. There is a beauty in carefully chosen words, in the tight control of metre and scansion and the timbre of the voice that recites it aloud, in saying the words in the correct way to most enhance their meaning.

“ _’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe,_ ” Kirk declaims, his tone suggesting proud bearing, though he does not move from his loose-limbed slouch, elbows draped laxly over the arms of the chair and thighs splayed, casual and thoughtlessly sexual, as nearly everything he does is. Spock has become accomplished at ignoring this, since the Captain does not seem to be aware of it; it is simply something he does, as intrinsic to his being as breathing and blinking. “ _All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe._ ”

“Those are not words from any language I recognise,” Spock says when the human pauses, tilting his head slightly to one side, curious. “Surely this detracts from the meaning, as most humans should not recognise them either.”

Kirk laughs, eyes crinkling up at the corners where, when he is older, he will have wrinkles. “That’s kinda the point, Spock. It’s nonsense verse. Like, um...” he thinks for a moment, then recites, “ _I eat my peas with honey. I’ve done it all my life. It makes the peas taste funny, but it keeps them on the knife._ ” He seems to find this particularly amusing; the ridiculousness of the statement appears to be the focus of the poem, rather than an attempt to convey any deeper emotion.

“Vulcan poetry does not include ‘nonsense verse’,” he says, and does not tell Kirk how ludicrous he finds the very concept of nonsense verse, how it misses the point of poetry.

“Well, no, I wouldn’t think it would,” Kirk says, and laughs again.

 

 

~~~

 

  
Kirk – Jim – finds the oddest moments at times to recite; it is when Spock catches him once again down in engineering in deep discussion with Scotty over some schematic or other when he should be on the bridge that the Captain espies him, groans in the manner of teenage humans everywhere, and says, “Very well, Spock, lead me back in chains. _Being your slave, what should I do but tend  
Upon the hours and times of your desire?  
I have no precious time at all to spend,  
Nor services to do, till you require._”

“Might I remind you, sir, that you are the Captain, and our roles should, on most ships, be decidedly reversed?” Spock answered, while Scotty looked at Kirk askance, eyebrows near meeting his hairline.

“And yet, it seems, despite being the Captain, I don’t get to do anything I want to do when I want to do it,” Jim says easily, clapping his Chief Engineer on the shoulder in farewell and falling into step beside Spock as though he had intended to be there all along, and Spock had merely come to collect him at a pre-arranged time.


End file.
